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"The Magician, The Magic Shows and The Entertainment"

29 March 2013

The Two Ronnies - Mastermind Sketch

The Two Ronnies were the highlight of Saturday night light entertainment for over sixteen years (1971 - 1987) and made our hero's Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett in to TV stars and one of the most successful double acts around.

But unlike their biggest rivals, Morecambe and Wise, Corbett and Barker were not an exclusive pairing. They worked together as The Ronnies but also had their own projects. Barker had a string of sitcom hits including Porridge, Going Straight, Open all Hours and Clarence. Corbett scored a massive success with the Sitcom "Sorry!" that saw him a playing forty-something single librarian, Timothy Lumsden.

The Two Ronnies Show always featured comedy sketches in which Corbett and Barker appeared both together and separately. Corbett always had his own spot sitting in his chair, facing the camera, telling corny jokes, whereas Barker would appear in clever word-play sketches that he had, more often than not, written himself. There were also those hilarious mini-serials that featured detectives Piggy Malone and Charley Farley, and the classic "Phantom Raspberry Blower of old London Town" which was written by Ronnie Barker and Spike Milligan. And, of course, the shows finale was always some big musical spectacular that often saw our boys in drag.

There are countless sketches I could have picked to show here on my blog: The classic "Four Candles" Sketch for example, but I plumped for this very clever and equally as funny parody of the quiz show "MasterMind". Ronnie Barker is Magnus Magnusson and Corbett is the Contestant who is "Answering the question before the last one". It's a fine example of why The Two Ronnies were so popular, and here it is in full. I hope you enjoy.

The show always opened and closed with the famous spoof news-readers routine and this gave rise to their catch phrase: